NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/sys/amiga/hardware/19394

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-13 | 4.3 KB

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From: [e-mail] (David Navas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware,comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Floppy size in 1200?
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Date: 11 Nov 92 16:29:54 GMT
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I write
>       Limited upgrade path from A500
>                       (competition, Amiga)

Somebody (attribution lost) writes:
>Someone's going to buy a new 500 over a 1200?  Not likely.  Besides, you

In answer to your question, I dunno.  Very much depends on what the
1200 is priced at doesn't it?  :)

And anyway, we're talking about upgrades -- meaning, are the several
millions of A500 owners going to shovel out 399 pounds for the A1200.
The competition is Amiga, not because people will "upgrade" from the 500
to the 500 (huh?) but because they'll choose to NOT upgrade, period.

BTW -- I dreamed last night that Cmdre spent dozens of millions of dollars
advertising these machines on TV before the Christmas season.  Wild dream,
eh?  [True story]

>can't take your 500 peripherals, for the most part, to any other Amiga

I have three peripherals on my A500 -- the clock/calendar/512k of extra
chip -- which should BOTH be included in the A1200 (?), 2megs of memory
(which I probably wouldn't want to reuse -- too big), and a 70M SCSI
harddrive.  Okay, so the drive is old and needs to be low-level formatted,
etc.  So?  ;)

>model.  (Unless you want to use your RAM chips, if they're the right sort.)

1M RAM costs how much?  Piddly, forget it, it's just not worth the 16bit
interface.  Course, we could do something like put in SIMM sockets that
requires adding 4 SIMMs at a time for 32bit memory (or something like that).
Oh, I forgot, Cmdre just went to SIMMs and they aren't this kind anyway ;)

I'm more talking about the 70M SCSI harddrive I'd love to move to the A1200,
and haven't got a recourse to do so.
That will cost me at least $200 to replace....
And THEN -- how do I get my data from my SCSI harddrive to my IDE hardrive?
That's about an hour via parnet -- assuming you have parnet....
Of -course- we don't need networking.  (bah!, not!)

Course, I could put it in my A3000, but then I've got a 520M and a 105M
in there already....

>And face it, you'd bottleneck the heck out of your shiny new 020 if you put
>a 500 RAM card on it!

Yeah, and it would run like the wind if it had a reasonable harddrive tacked
on to it ;)

Remember the little note about "engineering tradeoff"?  Guess what, A500
upgraders have this "tradeoff" thing too.  It would be technically better
if they could have migrated everything from their A500 to their A1200, even
at the cost of speed -- this allows them to get their work done, if slower,
and eventually upgrade to get it done faster.  Without VM (ahem!), not having
enough RAM means not getting your work done.  Period.

Joel writes:
>Oops.  That's probably proving HIS point, not yours.  Maybe he believes the
>1200 should be able to use some of those otherwise useless 500 add-ons.

Not me personally, mind you -- this was brought up by one or two other
posters.  I think it'd be a big boon to have a 25pin external SCSI connection,
though, mind you....  I'm merely listening to the folks who post here, haven't
done any actual marketing research on the subject....

Again, we're speaking about the sum total of the A1200's possible problems.
This is a possible problem for a couple of million potential upgraders.  It
may or may not be serious.  It may or may not be a sell/buy point.  It -is-
one of many, and it -all- depends on what marketing thinks we (foolish
Americans) will pay for it.  In my estimation, $400 is great, $600 w/o
harddrive is too much.  But that's -my- estimation.
David C. Navas                        [e-mail]
Working for, but not speaking on behalf of, Oracle Corp.